[Oxrun Station] The Bloodwind (14 page)

He straightened, his gloved hands bunched into fists.
"Nothing," he said flatly, "is going on, Pat. I told you last week not to give them so much credit, and I mean
it. They're kids. I don't care how old they are, they're
kids."

"Shit," she said, turning Upslope toward the car so she wouldn't have to look at him. "Crap. Bull. What's the matter, was Oliver or Ben making time with that
. . . that Susan Haslet or Abbey Wagner? Were they
cutting you out of something, Greg?"

And as soon as she said it she bit hard on her lower
lip, spinning around to apologize and seeing that an
apology would do her no good at all. He stared at her as
if she'd struck him, his eyes without expression. Then
he started toward the car along the wind-cleared road,
pausing at the higher level to look back at her.

"You
coming?"

He made it sound as if nothing would displease him
more, and her rage boiled through her shame just long
enough for her to shake her head and give him her
back. She heard him leaving without even trying to get
her to change her mind, heard the VW sputter to life
and the rear tires whine until they found purchase as he
U-turned and drove back into the forest.

The sound of the engine lasted for quite a long time.

And when it was finally buried by the relentless press
of silence she reached up a hand and brushed a tear
from her cheek. What she had done had been spiteful,
petty jealousy, damned close to ghoulish. Greg loved
her, and she had struck out at him when he'd hit too
close to home with his criticisms of the trio. Too close.
Much too close for her to think of any effective denial,
hitting out instead like the child she'd thought she'd left
behind decades ago.

She punched at the air.

She kicked at the snow the wind hadn't been able to
dislodge.

She walked back to the boulder throne and leaned
hard against it, staring across the quarry until her gaze
finally sidled to the place where she'd discovered the
stone for Homer. She wished she had him now, if only
to crack over Greg's head.

"Hell."

The two of them.
What a hell of a pair. Both so frightened of each other they couldn't have a simple
conversation without either shying away or turning to
sarcasm. If one of them didn't say "I love you" damned
quick, the next time they met they might do permanent
damage. But the way he'd acted today, she'd be damned
if she'd be the first.

Then, to the quarry: "Did you hear that? Did you
hear
what I just said?" She kicked the throne in disgust. "Damn, I sound just like him."

It occurred to her then not to finish his statuette; then
to finish it and give it to him anyway, just to see the look on his face.

It also occurred to her that she'd better calm down before she did or said anything that would drive him
away. That she didn't want.

She slumped onto the seat again and stared glumly at
the far wall. She had certainly done it this time. All
he'd been trying to do was caution her against too deep
an involvement, and she'd turned on him as if he'd
accused her of murder. As usual, she'd reacted strongly
to any hint of weakness in herself, a weakness she knew
was there but couldn't tolerate showing to others.

Like bragging, for god's sake, about fearlessly climbing halfway down the quarry wall to get the stone that
became Homer. What had happened was far less
flattering
—she'd been walking along the edge and peer
ing down into the dark water for signs of life, for hints
of fish, when her foot had slipped and she'd fallen.
Luckily, the ledge had been there, jutting nine feet at an
upward angle over the pit—nine feet out and six feet
wide. She landed on her rump, and once the pain and
the dying-fear had passed, she'd seen the crack in the wall, and she'd seen the stone. Two large halves that,
with the aid of a rope from the car, she'd hauled up
after wrapping them in an old burlap sack. The one half
had been Homer's grey-white; the other, Greg's, was the same, only the grey was slightly darker. That one she had given to him in hopes he would try some
sculpting of his own, but when she'd initially had the
notion for Homer's twin she'd managed to wheedle it
back from him without explaining why. Had almost
despaired when he'd told her he'd given it to Ben.

But Ben apparently hadn't taken it. They found it at his workspace in her Fine Arts studio, and so anxious
was she to begin work on Greg's gift she'd had no
compunctions at all about taking it without asking. It
had been one of those I'll-talk-to-him-tomorrow things,
when tomorrow never comes, and Ben had never mentioned it and she only remembered it whenever she was
here at the quarry.

Here at the quarry, trying to work up enough energy
to start the walk home.

Her anger rekindled.

Idiot! Didn't he know she could freeze to death before she reached the nearest farmhouse? What did it
matter that she only had to follow the road downhill; my god, it would be dark before she broke from the
forest, and suppose there was no one home? Suppose
there was another storm tonight? She scanned the sky quickly, her nervousness rising until she convinced her
self the haze to the south was only the weak sun's
discoloration, not a forming cloudbank.

Enough, she ordered then.
Enough.
Take it easy. And get off your ass before it freezes to the rock.

She leaned forward to stand.
Stopped when she saw a
band of powdery snow trail off the quarry's rim.
It
scattered and swirled, was followed by another on the opposite wall.
A third.
A fourth.
As if the ground were
tilting and dumping its load.

Then she felt the wind.

And heard the deep-throated grumbling.

EARTHQUAKE,
she thought; but when her concen
tration shifted briefly to her hands, her feet, she could
feel no vibrations through the stone, the ground. A
glance to the sky, and the blue had hazed over; a glance to the woods on either side of the quarry, and the trees
were immobile.

She wanted to move, to get off the throne and start running up the road. Maybe Greg had cooled down and
was turning back. Maybe there was a truck coming up
the trail, a farmer or some kids out for some illegal
hunting. And maybe it was simply a stone shifting under pressure of the cold.

The wind flicked like the tip of a whip against her
cheek, and it took her a moment to realize its direction.

South; from across the mouth of the quarry and di
rectly into her face.

The
snowtails
fell more strongly, slipping from be
tween cracks and shrubs, falling toward the covered ice.
White waterfalls now that began to swerve away from
the ice as if repelled, sweeping toward the center and
billowing upward again, twisting, writhing, shaping them
selves into a funnel that climbed slowly toward the haze.
Pouring from all sides, and lifting from the
bot
torn
, until the black surface was clear, reflecting noth
ing of the turmoil above it and allowing her to see nothing below.

She was mesmerized.

She knew it was a phenomenon of the wind, of the
shape of the quarry, of the powdery substance of the
snow, and despite the
subaural
grumbling she was in
trigued, wondering how high the fattening pillar would
rise
before either it collapsed under its own spinning
weight or the wind finally shifted direction. It was now midway to the top, and still the snow fed it. She looked
down to her feet and saw the flakes shifting away from
her, curling around her heels to ride for the edge, saw
patterns of white streaming around the sides of the
throne, moving so rapidly she had a moment's illusion
the stone was traveling backward. She closed her eyes,
opened them quickly, and saw that the revolving pillar
had begun to change color.

Fascination died.

There were flecks now in the white, flecks of deep red that blurred into a pink too much like watered
blood. She shrank back, pulling one leg up protectively,
pushing herself with her hands until she was almost
standing.

Deep red.
Deeper.

And the grumbling grew louder.

The pillar rose higher. She thought for a panicked
moment of cinema effects, twisted spires of flame that
yielded no heat and cowed the actors just the same.

But this was cold.
A dull
and lifeless cold shading
from white to red without benefit of the sun, without a
fire nearby. Her other leg drew up and she was crouch
ing, trying to watch the snowfall and the funnel simulta
neously. She grew dizzy. Her lips dried, her eyes burned,
but when she lifted a hand as if to ward off the vision she realized it wasn't the snow that had turned red, it
was something inside the spiraling fury, something lift
ing itself ponderously from beneath the black ice.

A movement contrary to the pillar's spin
, a flash of
dark red that caught her eye and was lost before she could follow it.

Mesmerized; drawing her legs and arms closer in
ward, kneeling and hugging herself, until a second
flashing movement galvanized her. She did not cry out
(though she thought she heard a scream), and she did
not scream (though she thought she heard herself cry
out); she launched herself over the throne's left armrest
and landed with her back to the quarry, on her knees
and slipping toward the edge. Her hands grasped at the frozen ground, claws searching for purchase, while her back strained and her legs fought to bring up her feet.
Slipping
again,
and her right foot came up against a stone. She used it. Without thinking she let all her weight rest against it, suddenly straightened her leg, and flew several feet in the air before she landed on
hands and knees, crawling frantically, legs pulling up
almost to her waist until she was up on her toes, on her
fingers, up on her feet and racing for the crest.

The wind ignored her. It grumbled and shrieked be
hind her, magnified by the quarry's throat, smothering
her bird-weak prayers and sending daggers of pain into
her ears.

At the top, turning and not wanting to turn, seeing the pillar rise above the quarry, seeing within it a
creature deep red still masked by the white. Yet it was
there. She could see it. She could see . . . something ...
an arm, a tentacle, a limb of some sort thrashing
about as if seeking a way to smash through whatever held it.
A flare, then.
An eye.
The vague outline of a
head turning like a beacon; turning, stopping, and she
knew it had seen her.

It bellowed.

Whatever head it
had,
whatever throat it had, it
raised the one and stretched the other and it bellowed its challenge, unmistakable and enraged. Immediately, the
snow lifted from the ground and blinded her, made her
windmill her arms as her boot came down on a patch of
ice. She stumbled forward, sideways, and fell.
Sprawled.
The snow climbing over her, insects of ice that slipped
down her collar and into her ears, into her eyes, past
her clenched lips and into her mouth.
She tumbled, slid,
tumbled
again the full hundred yards down to the trail.
An elbow cracked viciously against the ground and she
screamed, feeling the numbness climb to her shoulder;
her forehead glanced off a rock, and there were more
colors than white, none of them red, burning Catherine
wheels through her vision until she cried again; her
knee; her back; and the snow swarmed around her, no
longer soft, no longer gentle, striking her like pebbles
even after she regained her feet and started running again.

The trail rose, and she sobbed. She was heading in
the wrong direction. She turned helplessly, looked back once over her shoulder and saw something . . . red . . .
climbing over the crest.

It bellowed.

It challenged.

She flung herself forward, only half-thinking that the snow-cloud meant to stop her could also hide her for a
while. And immediately the thought came, the snow
settled. Like dust, ghost-dust, it drifted out of the sky and back to the ground, and she swerved off the trail
and raced toward the woodland. Out of the open, she
thought; get out of the open. It made no difference that
a thing that size would snap the trees to pieces, like so
many brittle bones; if she were out of the open there
would at least be the slim chance of safety, the smallest
hope of escape. Anything else would be unthinkable, and deadly.

The sheds blurred past her, and behind the last one in
the row she stumbled over something buried beneath the white. She fell heavily, her mouth filling with snow that
stung her cracked lips, her shoulder striking the rear wall to black her out for a moment. And when she
awoke her face was pressed hard against the rough,
gapping wood, and one hand was thrown up to blot out
the sky, the other pushing against the shed to bring herself to her feet.

Die, she thought; oh god, I don't want to die.

She listened for the space of a dozen heartbeats, a
dozen shuddering breaths.

And heard nothing, not even the rasp of air in her lungs.

Quickly, then, she shifted position into a crouch.
Blinked
snowglare
and pain from her eyes and scanned
the area immediately around her. Pine saplings weighted
and bent.
A rock breeching the crusted white.
Twenty yards, she estimated, between herself and the trees. But
she did not run.

She listened.

And heard nothing.
Not even the wind.

Her hands dipped into her pockets, clenched around several hard lumps she pulled out absently. Once again
she'd managed to bring pieces of Homer's duplicate
with her, and she tossed them aside angrily, did not see
them land when a second thought turned her gaze.

There was an impulse, then, short-lived and futile
—to
scrabble through the snow to find the stones again.
David and Goliath.
Parts of her she shouldn't lose, parts
of her now lost forever.

Calm she told herself sternly when she felt herself
slipping. Damn, Pat, be calm or we're dead. We're dead.

There was a mask of perspiration gleaming on her face, an ice-river slithering slowly down her spine. Though she clenched her jaw as best she could, her
teeth chattered uncontrollably, and her left knee jumped spasmodically until she clamped a hand on it and held it
there tightly. Lifted it, waited,
then
brought the hand to
her mouth and bit down on a knuckle. It was then she
realized she had been holding her breath, and she slipped
it out in white spurts, breathing through mouth and
making her teeth ache. She swallowed, and winced at the sandpaper that had abruptly lined her throat.

She thought she could taste the warm salt of blood.

The woods, silent; the sky, lowering.

The shed creaked under the weight of its snow, and
she held her breath again, staring at the nearest plank as
if it were ready to split open and spill the creature into
her lap.

The woods, silent.

In a moment so swiftly passing it was gone as soon as she noted, she could feel every inch of her skin
pressing damply to her clothing: her breasts to her shirt, her stomach to the waistband, thighs to her jeans, calves
to her boots, toes so cold they felt nothing at all. It was
as though she
were
suddenly naked, and she moved a
few inches to kill the sensation before it overwhelmed
her.

Then she listened, and heard nothing.

Gone.
Oh my god, it's gone. It has to be gone. Please; please let it be gone.

Yet she dared not move. If it was just waiting, somewhere out there waiting, it would see her the moment she broke into the open. It wouldn't hurt to wait herself.
To rest.
To think.
But she felt as if all logic circuits in her mind had shorted out, had con
sumed themselves in sudden explosions of sparks that denied her the reason she needed to know what was
happening.
Because what was happening, of course,
wasn't real.
It couldn't be real. She couldn't have had a
silly fight with Gregory and elected to walk home in the
middle of winter through the middle of a forest with
ninety feet of damned snow on the ground. And she couldn't have been sitting on that stupid thing she called
a throne, muttering to herself and feeling sorry for
herself
. And she certainly hadn't seen the snow suddenly drift off the edges of the quarry and form itself
into a tornado-like barrier around a deep-red, blood-red,
nightred
creature that just rose from the ice like some
stage trick on Broadway. She hadn't felt the wind. She
hadn't heard the grumbling, or the shrieking, or the
bellowing that was a challenge. She knew she hadn't,
because it couldn't have happened.

Not in the middle of a Sunday afternoon, in the
twentieth century, in Connecticut, of all places.

She uncurled a fist that had been pressed tight against
her chest. She stared at it, daring it to contradict her, demanding it prove to her she wasn't losing her mind.
Weeping suddenly and silently because if none of it had
happened, then her mind was indeed lost.
And she
would rather believe in
nightred
beasts rising from quar
ries than lose what she had protected for nearly forty
years.

It
snorted,
a snuffling as if a muzzle had been plunged
into a
snowbank
and yanked out again.

The tears stopped abruptly, and the hand returned to
her chest.
Feeling the heart pounding through its own
rabbit quivering.